Setting :
Setting
Time setting :
Time setting The time period in which a piece of literature is cast greatly affects the meaning of the writing. Values, ideals, and attitudes of people change with time and circumstances.
Trifles was published in 1916 and is set during the latter half of the 19th century
Slide 4:
Winter
The play takes place during winter.
The sheriff comments that “it dropped below zero last night”.
It was freezing cold! The cold penetrated into the unheated house to the point that Mrs. Wright’s “fruit; it did freeze” and burst from their containers).
Slide 5:
It is also during this time period that the woman’s domain is limited to the home and primarily the kitchen.
It is here where she spends most of her time cooking, boiling water to do laundry, heating her iron to do ironing, sitting to do her sewing, and talking with family members as they come and go.
Physical setting :
Physical setting Farm
Susan Glaspell uses a physical setting that corresponds to the seasonal time setting.
Just as she set the play in the harsh and “lifeless” freezing environment of winter, she also sets the farm in a “lifeless” and lonely hollow.
Since “there’s a great deal of work to be done on a farm,” “to be sure;” both Mr. and Mrs. Wright put in long days of work - she in the house, and he “out to work all day” on the farm.
Domain setting :
Domain setting Kitchen
Even more pronounced than the time setting and the physical setting of the farm is the use of a kitchen as a stage setting
Glaspell uses the kitchen setting to accentuate the value system of attitudes toward the genders
It is in the kitchen where the evidence of the motive for the murder is found – the one place the men never investigate – and it is the women who find the evidence (the broken birdcage and dead canary).